I'll start by saying that you should definitely try this game, Star Traders Frontiers is a sandbox, turn based RPG, somewhat similar to Sid Meier's Pirates in some way, featuring a completely open gameplay in a procedurally generated galaxy.

The game is still in early access but the developers are putting out updates faster than I've ever seen in an early access game, and I haven't really encountered any game breaking bugs, my experience was quite smooth and bug-free in general. The developers also seem quite easy to interact, truly interacting with the community. It's quite rare really! (And trust me, I have played a lot of early access games!)

You play as a fresh "Star Trader", a captain of a ship, you start with creating a character by either choosing one of the default templates or create your own, selecting your starting profession(Merchant, Smuggler, Pirate, Spy, Bounty Hunter, and more!), select your skills and attributes, as well as your starting ship and contacts you know at the start. Then you create your map, select your faction and choose the difficulty setting...Oh the difficulty! There's quite a few difficulty settings with custom difficulty setting comming very soon!(At the time of writing this) The game can be quite brutal, especially on Hard and above as that's when permadeath becomes a thing. After you select all that, your adventure begins!

The gameplay features various possibilities, you can fly from world to world, trading goods as a merchant, you could explore wilderness, you can spy, blockade or patrol around a planet, (Which is done via a simple rng-ish, card minigame) or you could focus on the game's story although that will still be expanded as the development progresses.

The contacts that inhabit the world will give you various missions which reward money and reputation(Which is required for trade permits, ranks etc), plus can influence a conflict between the factions.

As you play, you have to remember about fueling your ship, repairing it, as well keeping your crew healthy, well-paid and on high morale, as they can leave your crew or even start a mutiny.

While flying your ship you can of course encounter other ships, which could end up with ship combat or crew combat(Crew combat works similar to Darkest Dungeon).

Your crew gains experience as you play, and as they level up you can upgrade their jobs, and select new talents. Your ship can also be upgraded with A LOT of components, or you could even buy a new ship.

No two games will be the same as thanks to the procedural generation, each time you start a new game, everything from the map itself to "Contacts" that inhabit the map will be different.

The game features quite complex simulation of various parts of the world, the factions will start conflicts, contacts will try to fulfill their own agenda (They might even assassin each other!) The game feels truly alive.

All in all, a pretty awesome game, reminds me a bit of Sid Meier's Pirates, amazing depth, a procedurally generated world that truly feels alive and excellent replayability with great developers! I most likely forgot to mention some features here but, it's a hidden gem that in my opinion deserves much more attention than it currently has, and it is easily worth the price!